Tuesday, 7 July 2015

One of my very first game designs ...

A few weeks from now, I have young nephews coming over to spend a few days at Uncle Phil's house. Of course, they expect to be entertained. They are still a bit too young to be introduced to "proper" wargaming, although I have played simplified D&D with them and some simple move-and-shoot fantasy wargames.

Anyway, I was rumbling through my stockpile of old board wargames from my own youngster days that might appeal to them, and I came upon Embuscades. It wasn't that difficult though, since the box is large enough not to go unnoticed. Embuscades is a game I have very fond memories of. We probably played this game a hundred times during all those lazy summer holidays.

I opened the box probably for the first time in 20 years, and encountered something I had not expected - my very first own-designed wargame. This was a variant upon Embuscades, which we must have made somewhere around 1980, when I was 13. It suddenly all came back to me: we drew some islands and ship lanes on large sheets of chain paper from the university computer labs. We also built some very crude transport ships out of wood, that could hold 2 vehicles and men. The idea of the game was still very similar as the original Embuscades - capturing your flags before the opponent captures his. I don't remember whether we played this variant (I do remember other games I designed, although these have perished), but the fact it was still in the box after all these years suddenly made me very happy ;-)

Whether kids from 2015 will still enjoy Embuscades as much as I did 35 years ago remains to be seen ...

About Us

We are a small informal group of miniature wargamers in the 40-50 age bracket, operating in the Puurs-Zemst area (halfway between Brussels and Antwerp). Games are played at member's houses, the host usually providing a scenario and all the forces. We play many periods, frequently using house rules. Our annual highlight is the CRISIS show, at which we often stage a participation game.